Skinny Bitch in Love (31 page)

Johannsen had yet to make an appearance. All the more to rile up the crowd when he did walk on, I figured. Sara and I put all my stuff on the counter. I was ready.

“And five. Four. Three. Two. And live,” called the producer.

The clapping and cheering and “Eat me!” chanting started up immediately. While I started slicing the eggplant, Johannsen appeared and called out, “My challenger calls herself Skinny Bitch! And she doesn’t eat or wear or use anything that comes from an animal. I think she could rename herself Stupid Bitch!”

The audience hooted and clapped. “Stupid Bitch!” they chanted.

What a moron. I totally ignored him.

Sara focused on measuring out the dry ingredients, then shouted at Johanssen, “I’ve already renamed you Knuckle Dragger. Totally fits the Neanderthal over there, right?” she said to the audience. They clapped and cheered and wolf whistled. “I got this,” she whispered to me. “No problem.”

I heard everything from “Go, Clementine!”—at least twice from Ty’s booming voice—to “You suck, Johannsen.” Which elicited a “Suck this” from my challenger across the stage. I glanced over and he was holding an eggplant up to his crotch.

Classy.

As I sliced and cut the eggplant into square pieces, Sara had my spices in their measuring cups and spoons ready to go as I asked for them. I got on the tomato sauce and Sara kept her eye on the amazing bread I’d baked myself that morning as it toasted in the oven.

“Too many ingredients over there!” Johannsen shouted, jabbing his finger at me. “What do I always say is the key to good cooking, folks?”

A producer held up a giant cue card. “Kiss! Kiss!” the audience chanted back.

“That’s right!” he shouted. “K. I. S. S. Keep it simple, stupid!”

The audience cheered.

“Eggplant,” he shouted. “Marinara sauce—made from tomatoes and some garlic and salt. Bread crumbs. Good
mozzarella cheese. Done! She’s got all of Whole Foods over there!”

I rolled my eyes and focused on my cheese sauce.

“Gross—tofu!” Johannsen shouted, sticking his finger down his throat.

“
You’re
gross,” Sara shouted back.

He laughed. “How gross am I?” he chanted to the audience.

“So gross!” they shouted back.

This was a cooking show? Seriously? I was getting more and more embarrassed to be there at all, but for $25,000 I needed by the 15th? I’d suck it up.

“Let me tell you something, folks,” Johannsen said, slapping mozzarella cheese on his slabs of bread crumb–coated, marinara-soaked eggplant. “That crap she’s putting on her eggplant? Not cheese!”

“Not cheese!” the audience chanted back.

Someone shouted, “Go, Crunchy Vegan. All the way back to the farm!”

“Crunch this,” Sara shouted at the guy, which elicited claps and cheers and boos.

“I like this chick,” Johanssen shouted at the audience, jabbing a thumb Sara’s way. “Too bad she’s gonna lose!”

More clapping. More cheering.

The more this crap went on, the more grateful I was that Alexander hated my guts and wouldn’t answer his phone. He would not have survived five minutes up here. Sara perfectly walked the line between focusing on assisting me, watching
the time, and shouting back at Johannsen and the audience. Oscar-worthy performance.

“Fifteen minutes,” Sara and Johannsen’s assistant called at the same time. I carefully laid each square of eggplant in the four sauté pans.

“Aww, how cute!” Johannsen shouted. “She’s so dainty with her planty-loo!” He practically threw his slabs of eggplant in his pans, sauce splattering.

“Aww!” the audience shouted.

“Five minutes!” Sara and the other assistant shouted.

We plated the Eggplant Parmesan, which looked and smelled amazing. I glanced over at the mess Johannsen was serving up.

That money was mine.

The nineteen taste testers were seated at a long table onstage, in front of the kitchens. Each had two plates in front of them—the one that was clearly Johannsen’s, with its thick oozing mozzarella cheese and pile of sauce, and mine, which looked a thousand times more delicious than Johannsen’s.

They cut bites. They chewed. They took more bites.

Finally, Johannsen took the mike. “Okay, taste testers. Whose Eggplant Parmesan did you like better? Mine or the Skinny Bitch’s? No matter who wins, $25,000 goes to the American Heart Association. But if Blondie here wins, she also gets twenty-five thousand big ones. So who’s it gonna be?”

One by one, he went down the table of taste testers. They shouted out “Johannsen” or “the Skinny Bitch.” I had seven votes so far. Johannsen had eight.

“Four more votes!” Johannsen said.

“The Skinny Bitch!” shouted the next taster, flashing me a thumbs-up.

“Johannsen!” said the next guy.

Shit. He had nine votes. I had eight.

Unless the next two voted for me, I’d lose.

“Okay, taste tester number eighteen,” Johannsen said. “Who’s it gonna be. Me, right?”

“No! The Skinny Bitch,” the guy shouted. “Hers is fantastic. And I love cheese!”

Shit, yeah. I was so close. So close. I shut my eyes for a second, willing the next guy to say “Skinny Bitch.”

“Taste tester nineteen!” Johannsen boomed. “The vote is tied. Who’s it gonna be? Drumroll, please.”

Indeed, there was a drumroll.

“Your vote is . . . ” Johannsen shouted.

“I vote for . . . ” the guy said, drawing it out, per the cue card that said to. “Oh, man, I can’t believe it, but the Skinny Bitch’s rocks. Sorry, Joe!”

“You won!” Sara screamed. She jumped up and down. “Clem won!”

Johannsen faux stabbed himself in the heart. “And the winner of the Eggplant Parmesan cook-off is . . . shockingly enough, Clementine Cooper!”

The audience leapt to their feet, cheering and chanting, “Skinny Bitch! Skinny Bitch!”

I did it. And I wasn’t talking about beating the gross slob, though I did do that. I won the money. Clementine’s No Crap Café was
mine
.

Text from Zach later that night:
Can’t wait to celebrate your win. I would have liked your Eggplant Parmesan better, too.

Me:
You hate tofu.

Him:
But I love YOU
.

I went completely still for a second. But instead of texting something back, or calling him, I just stared at that text for the longest time. So long that the next thing I knew, birds were chirping like crazy and the sun was shining.

I love you, too,
I was thinking.

So why couldn’t I say it?

Chapter 22

I took another look at the text that had turned me into a zombie and tried to get all therapisty on myself to figure out what exactly I was thinking, feeling, but got nowhere and started on my orders for today. Three hours later, vintage Bee Gees cranking, I was covered in whole wheat pastry flour and unsweetened applesauce and had three dozen vanilla chai cupcakes, three loaves of Irish soda bread, four dozen glazed cinnamon rolls, and a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, a favorite of Sara’s, to celebrate her audition.

When the clock struck nine, I called the real estate agent and made an appointment to fill out an application to rent the space on Montana. I’d never been so excited to deal with stacks of paperwork in my life.

Zach called just as I was ready to head out. “No response,” he said.

I wasn’t proud of how I’d left him hanging. But if I was going to tell Zach Jeffries I loved him, it sure as shit wouldn’t be via text.

It wasn’t about to come out of my mouth, either. Not yet, anyway.

“I have a response,” I said. “I’m just—”

“Not saying it.”

“Yeah.”

“Meet me at your place. I have something to show you.”

“And I have something to tell you. Guess who just put in an application to rent that little place on Montana for Clementine’s No Crap Café?”

Dead silence. “That’s a little far up, though, isn’t it?”

At least he was consistent. “Yeah, for your crowd, maybe, Zach. People who have to use Laundromats and take mass transit pass it every day.”

“Meet me in front of The Silver Steer at five o’clock.”

“Why?”

“Told you. It’s a surprise.”

I hated surprises.

My hand was happily numb from filling out that enormous application. But when I handed it over, I felt like I did when I won that sparkly blue ribbon at eleven. When I graduated from the Vegan Culinary Institute. When I got my first job. My first promotion. When I beat that slob Johannsen.

My own place. It was so close to happening. The real estate agent swore me to secrecy but said I had a ninety-nine percent chance of winning out over the other three applicants: a bar—too noisy too late; a coffee bar—which would compete with the landlord’s cousin’s place up the street; and a knitting shop, which he was afraid would go out of business and leave him hanging to go through this whole process again. She couldn’t promise anything and said fourteen times I shouldn’t pin my hopes on it because you never knew.

No kidding.

Still, it was so close I could taste the Cha-Cha Chili. My Double-Dip Fondue. The Spicy Sushi Rolls.

I could see Zach’s Mercedes parked in front of The Silver Steer halfway up the block. He was leaning on the other side of it. At just the sight of him, it hit me:
I fucking love you, too.

It was there, loud as Jesse’s tuba concert, clanging away, but it felt stuffed down, like it was smushed inside the tuba and stuck there.

The Silver Steer. Somehow, the place didn’t stab me in the gut like it did every time I looked out the window or passed it on the street. The space was still drop-dead gorgeous with its perfect corner location and the stone archway and red door. The apartment building next to it, which I looked out at all day long while I cooked and baked, was the same as usual. From here, I could even see the woman who sometimes walked around naked in her bedroom on the second floor, though she was dressed now and watering her plants. The elderly couple who sat at their round
kitchen table by the window every morning having coffee were sitting there having dinner. The fattest cat I’d ever seen was at the usual second-floor window, staring out. But now that I almost had my own little place, Zach’s restaurant didn’t make me want to scream. I glanced up at the sign, expecting to barely be bothered.

But the sign was gone.

And underneath where it used to be stood Zach, watching me.

“The deed deer head is gone,” I said. “You took down the sign because it makes me sick?” He really
did
love me.

“Actually, that’s not why I took it down. The city wouldn’t let me enlarge the kitchen out the back, so I can’t make this space work for The Silver Steer. It’s just too small. But I own the building as an investment and this space is mine to do with what I want. And I want to lease it to you.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Clementine’s No Crap Café will open right here.” He handed me a sheaf of papers. “Your lease.”

In some kind of daze, I scanned the document. My name. The space, leased to me for one year. A monthly amount I could now handle—for about four months, tops, anyway. It had to be a big loss to him. And he was clearly planning on financing me once my money ran out.